The committee will recall that, at our previous meeting, we agreed to consider further action on social inclusion and community engagement. We have been asked to consider whether we wish to publish a report to highlight the action to date and to make recommendations to the Executive on social inclusion issues that have arisen from evidence. The clerk has produced a paper that highlights those issues.
Could we make sensible recommendations? I appreciate that we have received several discrete inputs on the issues that are described in the paper, but we have not investigated social inclusion partnerships in depth, bar the research report. Are we in a position to form a view? It would help to take on board the community budgeting stuff, but perhaps we should have a preliminary paper on the issues that are emerging, before we consider whether we need further evidence. It is a bit like the HMO situation—we are at the halfway stage rather than a stage at which a full report is possible.
The intention is that, following the evidence on community budgeting, an issues paper will be drawn together, with a view not so much to giving the Executive the full picture as to meeting some of the need of organisations that have contributed to our work. Obvious themes are emerging that we wish to highlight and reflect on further. We are not suggesting that we will produce fully formed solutions to every problem that has been identified to us, but at least we will flag up the key issues that we are taking on board and which we wish the Executive to be aware of.
I am happy with that.
I agree. At the away day, the minister made it clear that the Executive would undertake its own research into social inclusion partnerships and the issue was discussed in detail. We cannot provide any definitive solutions until that work has been performed and fed back to us.
Is that approach agreed?
Meeting continued in private until 12:22.
Previous
Carers Week